Mark Tidd, Editor — Inside the Classic

f _peek_ up over his fat cheeks. “Binney,” says he, “you hain’t as useless as I calc’lated. That’s an idea.”

“Oh,” says I, “is that what it is? I sort of figgered maybe it was a notion.”

Mark turned the whole of him around so he could face Plunk Smalley and Tallow Martin, who were standing behind him. By rights you ought to have a turn-table to move Mark around on, like they have for locomotives. He’s ’most as heavy as a locomotive, and when he talks sometimes it sounds like a locomotive pulling a load up-hill, snorting and puffing—he stutters so.

“Fellows,” says he, “this Binney Jenks is g-g-gettin’ so he talks like a minstrel show. Makes reg’lar j-jokes one right after another. Looks l-like he hain’t got time to be sensible any more.”

“But what’s the idea?” says Tallow.

“Want to talk to my father first,” says Mark. “C-come on.”

Mark’s father didn’t use to have any money at all. He just sat around inventing things and reading Gibbon’s _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. First he’d invent a little, and then he’d read a little, and it was a wonder he didn’t get the two mixed up. But finally he up and invented a turbine-engine, and it made such a pile of money for him that he didn’t need to do a thing but read Gibbon and carry bushel-baskets of dollars to the bank every little while.

Usually when a man goes and gets rich all of a sudden there’s some difference in him. He builds him a big house and hires a lot of folks to brush his clothes and make his beds and cook chicken for him three meals a day. But not Mr. Tidd. You wouldn’t ever think he had a cent more than he used to. He kept his little machine-shop in the barn, and wore overalls mostly—when he didn’t get on his Sunday suit by mistake. He was as like as not to do that very thing, if Mark’s mother didn’t keep her eye on him. He was a fine kind of a man, but he couldn’t remember things for a cent. If Mrs. Tidd sent him to the grocery for a bottle of vanilla, he’d like as not bring home a bag of onions. As far as he’d get with remembering, you see, would be that he wanted something with a smell to it.

Mrs. Tidd was fine, too. She scolded quite considerable, but that was just make-believe. If you’d come in sudden and tell her you were hungry and wanted a piece of bread-and-butter she’d sort of frown, and say you couldn’t have it and that it wasn’t good for boys to be stuffing themselves between meals—and then, most likely, she’d call you back and give you a piece of pie.

Getting rich hadn’t changed her, either. Once she tried keeping a hired girl, but it only lasted a week. She claimed it was more work following the girl around and saving what she wasted than it was to do the work itself.

Well, we hustled up to Mark’s house and went back to his father’s shop. Mr. Tidd, in greasy overalls, sat right smack in the middle of the floor, reading a book that looked like it was pretty close to worn out. We didn’t have to ask what it was—it was Gibbon. He didn’t need to read it; he could have _recited_ it if he’d a mind to.

“Hello, pa,” says Mark.

Mr. Tidd looked up sort of vague, as if he wondered who this stranger could be. Then he says: “Howdy, Marcus Aurelius. I was hopin’ maybe you’d drop in. Young eyes is better ’n old ones. Take a sort of a kind of a look around to see if you can find a chunk of lead—about four inches square and six inches long. Pretty hefty it was. Don’t see how I come to mislay it.”

We looked and looked, and no lead was anywhere to be found. But Mark did find a package with two pounds of butter in it.

“What’s the b-b-butter for, pa?” he asked.

“Why,” says Mr. Tidd, scratching his head, “why, seems to me like your ma sent me after that butter. Guess I must ’a’ fetched it in and clean forgot it.”

“Um!” says Mark, and out of the shop he went. In two minutes he came back, lugging the chunk of lead.

“Where’d you git it, Marcus Aurelius?” says Mr. Tidd.